Ground Zero

used to, but from their experiences believe that it has added tremendous value in a child’s learning process.

Hemant from Delhi-based Art of Play says, “The social-emotional component was always an important part of the education system and process. But it was not given its importance in the normal scenario. We did not have defined outcomes and goals specific to social-emotional learning. Now COVID-19 has exposed us to a very uncertain situation where a child is restricted within the boundaries of his home and exposed to different kinds of emotional pressures. COVID-19 has surfaced the well-being issue much beyond what we had imagined.”

Art of Play uses the social emotional learning frameworks of National Association for Sport and Physical Education (NASPE) and Emory University as a part of their sports curriculum for students, and modifies it based on feedback they receive from the ground.

The NASPE curriculum is focused on enhancing knowledge, improving professional practice, and increasing support for high quality physical education, sport, and physical activity programs. Emory University’s Social, Emotional, and Ethical (SEE) Learning curriculum enhances SEL programs with key additional components such as attention training, compassion and ethical discernment, systems thinking, resilience, and trauma-informed practice.

As a part of their program, Art of Play cater to all genders and children with physical abilities from grade 1 to grade 8 and also provide teacher training on implementing their program to government school teachers. The organisation has an assessment module in place where the growth of the children is tracked based on their physical development and their social and emotional learning. At present, Art of Play reaches out to over 13000 children in Ambala, Varanasi, Faridabad, and Delhi NCR.

While the organisation has adopted their curriculum to the online mode of delivery, it is evident that the engagement is not the same as it was offline. At present, the delivery of Art of Play’s online SEL curriculum is restricted to short tasks done by children in isolation or in small groups with or without a facilitator. The challenges faced in delivering social-emotional learning programs online remain the same as delivering a regular school curriculum such as limited access to phone or data, lack of interaction with teachers and other children – the core of social-emotional learning.

Karnataka-based organisation Makkala Jagriti, which means ‘Awakening of Children’ has been engaged in delivering an online curriculum focused on social-emotional learning since the lockdown. The team too found that data and device were big challenges in the delivery of their program, but there was also an unexpected positive outcome.

Sunayana from Makkala Jagriti says, “ Our focus was on addressing the socialemotional learning of parents and children by conducting activities and sessions to help them de-stress. One of the unexpected outcomes of the online sessions has been the involvement of parents in tasks given to children – that was a positive sign as it has helped in building a stronger bond between children and parents. Having said that, online classes are not a reality for the children that we work with.”

Makkala Jagriti seeks to create holistic learning platforms and empower socioeconomically deprived children. The organisation uses a curriculum that helps children in developing twenty-two life skills. The curriculum blends more than one life skill such as empathy and inter-personal skills or self-awareness and problem-solving, etc. so that there is repetition and reinforcement. The Makkala Jagriti team encourages teachers to appreciate children, help them